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World's War Events $v Volume 3 - Beginning with the departure of the first American destroyers for service abroad in April, 1917, and closing with the treaties of peace in 1919. by Various
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paymasters, had to do to establish a spy in the Saloniki area was to
send over one of their Intelligence Officers in the guise of a deserter
from the Greek army to that of Venizelos, and there he was! To send back
information, or even to return in person, across the but partially
patrolled "Neutral Zone" was scarcely more difficult, and it was the
wholesale way in which this sort of thing went on that made it so hard
for the Allies to decide just who the bona fide Venizelists were, and
just how far it would be safe to trust a force to which the enemy still
had such ready means of access.

[Sidenote: Tact and common sense used.]

There was nothing else for the Allies to do but "go slow" and "play
safe" in dealing with the Venizelist army, and, under the circumstances,
there is no doubt that a difficult situation was handled with a good
deal of tact and common sense. Just how trying the situation of the
Venizelists was, however, I had a chance to see one day when I happened
to be at their Headquarters arranging for my visit to the Greek sector
of the Front. Their troops had acquitted themselves with great credit in
some gallantly carried out raiding operations, which must have made it
doubly hard for them to put up with a new restrictive order just
promulgated by the Supreme Command as a further precaution against the
leakage of information to the enemy.

Just as I was about to take my departure, a copy of the new order was
delivered to the Staff Officer with whom I had been conferring about my
visit to the Front. He read it through slowly, his swarthy face flushing
red with anger as he proceeded.

[Sidenote: A series of humiliations.]
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